An update has been long overdue.

Had the chance to take my mini to the drags for Whoopass Wednesday at Perth Motorplex. It was Mini theme night - 'Mini car, Mini price' - Entry was 1/3 the normal price. So why not.

Was happy with the times, almost broke into the 14s on my best run of 15.09. Definitely room for improvement as I was only capable of racing with the boost set on the factory 'low'.

Either way i had some fun and learnt a lot. Definitely found some motivation to modify further. So stay 'tuned'.

Here are some photos. Thanks to Mark from the Perth Mini Facebook page.

Wedding shoot

Apologies for the lack of updates. 

After the Mini was registered it was all focus on my wedding in December 2013. That meant working away a lot and helping the fiance out where possible.

The mini was always going to be a part of the wedding so having it done in time was my target. It ended up turning out amazing as a prop in our photos! 

Road worthy and registered

So the day finally came. The mini has been through the department of transport's vehicle examination. She is now registered and road worthy.

A few weeks prior to this i had the engineer come out and inspect my project and write up a report stating the modifications made and how they met the Australian standards. He then sent in the report to the Department of Transport for me. I later received a letter from them approving the modifications subject to having my vehicle examined and a tare weight report. My mini came in at 740kg.

In Western Australia, vehicle modifications to this extent must be applied for and then inspected and approved by a recognized engineer before they can be road worthy and examined as i have mentioned above. The costs involved in getting the car road registered are by purchasing the following: temporary vehicle movement permit - $21; tare weight report - $25; vehicle examination fee- $96; modification permit - $20; stamp duty (of vehicle's duitable value) - $varies; and lastly the cost of registration ~ $250 (6 months).

Lining up at the Vehicle Examination

Once the Mini was examined by a Department of Transport officer he had to write up a modification approval permit that must stay with the vehicle at all times. This is to prove that all modications have been approved to anyone who may feel the need to pull me over ;-)

I proceeded to the Licensing centre with my approved forms and the statuary declaration of ownership of the vehicle then picked up my custom plates and paid for registration. Walking out of the Licensing centre with the plates in my hand it now meant my Mini was now fully road registered from date - 4th July 2013. 

Exactly 40 years after the car was built (July, 1973).

The day i drove it home

There are a couple of small things that still need to be completed on the project so this blog isnt quite finished just yet.

Throttle Spring Addition

The throttle and accelerator pedal of my car is rather light.

The issue isn't a major concern but i would like it to be a bit stiffer. I had been brain storming ideas for ages about what i could do, originally i tried attaching a spring to the foot pedal itself from a bracket inside the car and then later decided on a spring mounted to the inlet manifold and throttle bracket.

I've seen similar designs used for carburetors so it was simply finding a spring that would suit and making up a bracket. I came up with this.

I can say that there is definitely a noticeable difference and i am quite pleased with the final outcome!!

Boot Trim

I finally got around to making up my boot trim. 

First i made up some templates with cardboard. Then these were then transferred onto MDF and cut up. Next was to mock fit them to make sure everything fit okay. I made sure i left a small gap to access to my battery isolator too.

Once i was happy i covered the MDF pieces in black carpet. The boot trim were then fixed with small metal brackets that were painted black, along with the screws used for mounting.

All complete. Looks nice and clean.

Here's my battery isolator tucked under the carpet.

So i took my Mini over to Wilkinsons Suspension in Bayswater to have her height adjusted and suspension setup properly. They found that it was essential to use my adjustable suspension components to get all caster, camber and toe correct for the front and rear. I am now currently using adjustable rear brackets, adjustable lower control arms and adjustable tie rod bars. These will need to be added to the engineers report in order for them to be completely legal.

Wilkos had the car for a few days as they were quite busy but once i got the call to come pick it up I purchased a temporary movement permit and drove it back to the workshop. Fun fun fun. I checked the odometer with a GPS and surprisingly it was spot on. I was worried that i would need to get it calibrated or have a special gear wheel box made up like I've read on other build threads on the forums. The DPI states that my odometer must be within 10% of actual speed.

So with the car back at the workshop i decided to take a few snap shots out in the open.

Some vintage workshop love is always a keeper too.

Various Bits

A little update with various bits here and there.

To keep the doors from opening too far I used some old seat belts and made up some door stays. Simple and effective.

My final door trim finished.

The new gear shift lever bracket was always an eye sore so I made up a metal frame and then sewed up a vinyl cover to hide it. I left the cabling though.

The floor mats i used are some cheapies i purchased from Super Cheap Auto and trimmed to fit around the wheel well. I then used the scrap and sew the edge with left over trimming.

Dash, Demister, Audio + Carpet

Before i move onto the final dash installation. I need to bring up my heater demister system. I opted not to use the conventional system and used 2 x 12V hair dryers attached to the mini demister trumpets. They work reasonably well and since i wont actually be using them much it's not a big concern. They're really only for registration purposes.

For the dash I followed the same theme as my door cards and used the same black vinyl with white top stitching and glued the vinyl over my top and lower dash rails. I really had to be patient with these as sewing them was really difficult. They aren't perfect but when you do things yourself you're never really 100% satisfied anyway.

I went with a simple Pioneer deck with 4" speakers up the front and Autometer Pro Comp gauges. The odometer as you should know is from the Glanza dash and the switch panel was made by me integrating the heater demister, hazard lights and low boost switch. The other switches are manual over ride switches for the radiator fan and W2A radiator fan.

With the steering wheel installed it definitely looks the part. As you will also see i have started installing the red carpet. Its still not fully installed but i will update that in the future. 

For the rear i installed Pioneer 6" x 9" speakers in an under seat board wrapped again in black vinyl. This is pretty standard in most Mini's these days.

Side Mirrors + Wheel arches

It took me awhile to sort out my side mirrors and wheel arches although I had already purchased them awhile back. I wanted to paint them the same black that my roof was so it really just came down to me being too lazy to prep them. 

The side mirrors were purchased from Demon Tweaks and are the 'Vitaloni California Wing Mirrors'. I simply mock fitted them with nut inserts before taking them apart and painting them. I had only seen a few Mini's with these and thought these were a nice and different looking mirror.

The wheel arches i ended up using were the simple plastic wheel arches as my rims don't stick out so much anymore. I have some wider rims but they push my track out beyond road legal limits and since i will be going through the 'Pitts' i won't be able to get my car registered unless its within these limits. (+25mm from standard track length is limit)

I did make some modifications to the wheel arches as i don't like the exposed screw. I simply fiber glassed and body filled the holes and mounted the arches from underneath. This doesn't help with the body to tire gap and since my car is almost normal height for registration purposes, it will have to do for now. It would definitely look better dumped!! >_<

Door cards

Another job i decided to take on myself.

I've made door cards before and its not very hard but i had always just used some plain material and that was all. I wanted to do something nicer this time and actually put more effort into it. First i used some old door cards as templates and traced that onto some 3mm MDF. After cutting them out i mock fitted each one and trimmed them to suit.

I originally liked the look of the diamond quilted pattern and went searching for some pre-made stuff to use but found out it wasnt very easy to find and that most upholsterers made their own. After popping into Textile Traders i walked out with quite a bit of knowledge on how to sew vinyl. The vinyl i was going to use has a different texture than what ive seen and is fairly thick, this made it impossible to use for diamond quilting. I gave up. I went back to Textile Traders to talk to the lady who had been helping me out and she showed me a few tricks on the sewing machine. She gave me a few ideas and showed me how to top stitch like they do on leather/vinyl upholstery. After messing around on the sewing machine myself i started making these:

Close Up

The next job was gluing these on. I purchased some closed cell 3mm foam from Clark Rubber and glued that to the MDF and glued the vinyl on top, just for some padding. The vinyl was pulled around the back and staple gunned for good measure. 

Here is the end result

I mock fitted the door card to see how it looked with the door latch and window winder so i hadn't installed the Triumph arm rest / door pulls i found on eBay.

Finally here is the final installation.

Glass + Door Mech Install

This was a pretty quick job apart from integrating the starlet door lock to the mini door mech. All glass and chrome is reused from the previous mini so its not in the best condition but I cleaned and buffed as best as i could.

I started with the driver side door and did make a few scratches in the paint. Hopefully they wont be as noticeable once everything is on. I think i may of used the wrong chrome strip along the door window but i might stick with it anyway.

The rear side windows were easy enough to install but i made a small modification to the latch. I was shown this little trick from another mini enthusiast when i was purchasing some parts from him. It involves drilling out one of the pins and installing a lock pin in place. This allow for the rear windows to be opened completely, which may not seem very important but is quite convenient with easy access to the back seats.

Headlining + Rear View Mirror

This was a job i had been procrastinating about for awhile as its not an easy job. One day i decided to take it on and get it done and just take my time doing it.

I had purchased some new headlining rods from Minispares which are specially colour coded.

From front to back:
Red
White
White
Black
Blue
Yellow

I pretty much followed the instructions from a The Mini Forum post. The link is here. 

I would say I'm about 90% happy with the job, but i guess that's how most people feel about doing jobs themselves. There is one small corner that i couldn't quite get right but it will be sorted soon enough. 

With the windscreen installed earlier i was now able to install the rear view mirror. I was originally going to use the standard rear view mirror but opted for a brand new modern replacement that was glued to the glass. The glue used was purchased separately and was specific to rear view mirrors mounting on windscreens. It sets within seconds so i had to make sure it was installed in the right place.

Windscreen + Door Install

I never had an old windscreen as it was broken when i had purchased the mini. I found one on Gumtree for $40 but later found out that it was not legal to have on the road because it was not a laminated one. 

If I were to buy the windscreen and have it installed it would cost me $350-400, but if i chose to buy it as a 'supply only' and install it myself it would only cost $150. With $40 wasted i purchased the brand new laminated one from Instant Windscreens. Installation was fairly hard and i built up a good sweat. It is definitely a job you don't wanna do by yourself, so i had a friend help me. The trick from plenty of YouTube videos was to have some string or rope sitting in the seal and to pull the string out while pushing the glass in. We did it the hard way and used two plastic scrapers to slowly feed the glass in. The real trick is to use plenty of soapy water tho!

Once in, the next job was installing the fillet strip into the seal to lock the glass in. Again a fairly hard and fiddly job but I had the right tool which did make things easier. The fillet strip used was the non chrome one.

Note: The ending of the windscreen rubber and the ending of the fillet strip have to be at opposite ends otherwise the windscreen could come out (i found this out later so i will be redoing this)

While i had my friend helping me out i got him to hold the side doors while i installed the hinges, aligned the doors and then tightened all nuts. I may have to re-align them once the glass is in as they are the majority of the weight.

Here is how the driver side looked